The TeXbook

What Hacker News says

1. pmkaryAug 2026
   I guess around fourteen years ago—back when I was at high school—I picked up the legendary TeXbook. I was in love and totally beguiled by the great Knuth's Art of Computer Programming; how could it be so beautiful? how could it be so precise? and henceforth as I understood the he had developed that masterwork of TeX to make his book, I immediately went to read it. There, in page four he writes:

   I guess around fourteen years ago—back when I was at high school—I picked up the legendary TeXbook. I was in love and totally beguiled by the great Knuth's Art of Computer Programming; how could it be so beautiful? how could it be so precise? and henceforth as I understood that he had developed that masterwork of TeX to make his book, I immediately went to read it. There, in page four he writes:

   > Book printing differs significantly from ordinary typing with respect to

   > dashes, hyphens, and minus signs. In good math books, these symbols are all

   > different; in fact there usually are at least four different symbols:

   >

   > a hyphen (-);

   > an en-dash (–);

   > an em-dash (—);

   > a minus sign (−).

   >

   > Hyphens are used for compound words like ‘daughter-in-law’ and ‘X-rated’. En-

   > dashes are used for number ranges like ‘pages 13–34’, and also in contexts like

   > ‘exercise 1.2.6–52’. Em-dashes are used for punctuation in sentences—they are

   > what we often call simply dashes. And minus signs are used in formulas. A

   > conscientious user of T E X will be careful to distinguish these four usages, and

   > here is how to do it:

   >

   > for a hyphen, type a hyphen (-);

   > for an en-dash, type two hyphens (--);

   > for an em-dash, type three hyphens (---);

   > for a minus sign, type a hyphen in mathematics mode ($-$).

   So I kept using the beautiful em dash ever since; because that is how the greats do it.

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2. globular-toastSep 2025
   Knuth's The TeXbook is also a delightful read. You'll learn a lot about typography.
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3. globular-toastAug 2025
   There are actually four different "dashes" in La/TeX. The hyphen (-), en-dash (--) which is used for numeric rangen like 1--2, the em-dash (---) for punctuation, and the minus sign ($-$). Knuth talks about them in the TeXbook which is good fun.
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4. globular-toastMar 2025
   (La)TeX would typeset -- as an en dash. --- gets you an em dash.

   I, of course, used proper dashes in typeset documents, at least after I'd learnt about them in Knuth's The TeXbook. I have found myself occasionally use them in ASCII contexts just as ---. But I've never sought out the proper unicode character.

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5. PittleyDunkinJan 2025
   It's one of two literate programming books I've read—the other one is PBRT, which provides about the same level of quality as the TeXBook IMO (I haven't read metafont).

   > On balance I think modern tools achieve Knuth’s goals better than tangle/weave. Modern languages let you organize code much closer to its narrative structure, without WEB’s unhygienic scoping. Editors and IDEs and documentation browsers give you hyperlinks everywhere.

   I just don't think this is a technical concern to begin with. It's true that you can jump around code a lot easier, but this doesn't make the issue of laying out the code as a linear narrative with interleaved code and text any easier of a task. I do think it's an excellent, excellent way to present code, though.

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6. pmdulaneyJan 2025
   Donald Ervin Knuth's The TeXbook qualifies -- though solving the exercises is not always fun.
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